My manager told me to stop helping customers unless they asked first, so I did exactly that

So this happened last week and I am still shaking my head at how silly the whole thing was. I work at a small electronics repair store and usually people walk in already confused because half of them dont know what broke, what they bought or even what brand their device is. My whole thing is to greet them and try to figure it out fast so the line stays short.

A new manager took over and said I was being too proactive. He told me to never offer help unless the customer clearly requested it. He said customers should take initiative and I should not interrupt them while they browse. I told him ok, sure, your call. So the next day I followed this rule to the letter.
We opened at nine and within twenty minutes the front area turned into chaos. People were standing around holding random cables and chargers with zero clue what they matched with. One older guy was trying to plug a camera cable into a toaster. A mom kept asking her kid if their laptop was a phone or a tablet but technically she was talking to her kid not me so I had to keep quiet. The line grew past the door while I just stood there watching the confused crowd like some kind of reverse museum exhibit.

Manager finally walked out of his office looking all annoyed and asked why I was not assisting anyone. I reminded him that no one had directly asked for help so I was respecting his rule. Two seconds later a customer finally turned to me and said can you please help and the whole dam crowd echoed yes please. Manager just muttered something and told me to go back to doing things the normal way. Shockingly the chaos stopped in like five minutes once I actually spoke to people again.
Pretty sure he never expected me to follow his rule that literally, but hey he asked for it.